A day after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati vowed to deal sternly with Samajwadi Party leaders if they tried to take the law in their hands, party general secretary Amar Singh on Thursday alleged that the government was 'hatching a conspiracy to eliminate' its top leadership, including president Mulayam Singh Yadav.

"Mayawati will be held responsible if anything happens to any of us," he said.

He alleged that Brijlal, as the then SSP of Etawah, had also hatched a conspiracy to eliminate Mulayam.

Singh, who today led the SP agitation in Lucknow against the imposition of VAT, charged Mayawati with pursuing the politics of hatred and contempt.

Likening Wednesday's police firing on students in Mulayam's native village of Saifai, in which one person was killed, to the Jalianwala carnage, he said, "Mayawati cannot understand the grief of a mother as she is not a mother."

Singh alleged that the Etawah police chief and another senior police official jumped over the boundary wall of a college and indiscriminately fired on students who were appearing in an examination.

Contesting Mayawati's charge that the agitators were goondas and criminals, Singh said the deceased Mukesh Yadav was a student of BSc (agriculture).